But there was something worse. If she went to Sodur, she would have to tell him what had happened. He would congratulate her, proud that she had brought her magic to bear on her enemies at need. He would see it as a triumph, a ray of hope, a justification for his plotting. She couldn’t hear that. She glanced down at the smudge of gray beside her. It wouldn’t be true.
She turned and hurried down toward the Fringes, her throat tight with a strangling sense of failure, of fraud. Healing someone, even to mend a cold or start hair on a bald pate—that would be a ray of hope for Kodu Riik. Not this butchery.
Clinging like fungus to the curve of Koduteel’s northern wall, the Fringes was comprised of sprawling neighborhoods made of ramshackle buildings and squalid tents built from jumbles of patchworked and broken materials. They were arranged in twisty, clustered knots, each neighborhood split by narrow, zigzagging crevices that served as walkways and streets. The neighborhoods shifted constantly like the shore dunes east of the city, so that no road was ever in the same place it had been, and houses and people disappeared with alarming ease.
Reisil descended the rocky switchback along the lee side of the bluff, following the curve of the towering east wall. She pulled up her hood and huddled deep inside the folds of her cloak.
The track jerked and meandered down the steep pitch, stitching in and around strips of scree and low hummocks of rock seamed with moss and grass. There were no trees or shrubs for a quarter of a league around the walls, providing a field of fire for archers. The wall itself was pocked and blackened in places where the Patversemese had laid seige. As the trail brought her close to the wall again, Reisil patted the rough stone. Battered and pounded, the walls had held.
The Fringes smelled oppressively of manure, human waste, lye, fish guts, and acrid smoke. Children and dogs scurried through the fetid maze like ants, each as flea-ridden and filthy as the other. Their fathers worked paltry crafts, many without arms, or legs, or hands—scars of the war. Their women were equally scarred. Many in ways no one could see. Each day, sometimes twice a day, the women hiked a half a league over a steep, snow-covered ridge to the river. To discourage vagrancy, the Fringes were not permitted a well. Starvation and disease ran rampant there, and every day one or two rag-wrapped bodies were carried to the lych-ground northeast of the city.
For a while, Reisil was content to wander through the sprawl, winding around fires, dodging thin, bleating goats, carefully stepping over uncovered midden trenches. As always, she found herself both saddened and inspired by the strength of the Fringes’ denizens, the joys they wrenched from their sere lives. Tattered children, feet wrapped in rags, chased each other in a game of tag, laughing, cheeks blushing red as ripe apples. A cluster of women chatted and giggled and tied limp red ribbons in the hair of a young bride. A father taught his son the art of tying knots, the son beaming at his father’s praise. A young man presented his beloved with a wooden pendant in the shape of a dove.
The towers along the wall marked Reisil’s passage as she worked her way through the sprawl: Sunrise Tower,
Ahalad-kaaslane
Tower, Horn Tower. Far down the wall, past the Iisand Gate, she could see the blue cone-shape topping Talis Tower. There was a family camped below there that she had promised to visit again when time permitted. She turned her footsteps in that direction.
As she walked, she nodded absently to those who greeted the stranger in their midst, noting with dismay the ragtag bits of green affixed to a great variety of shacks and tents. Knobs of painted wood, ribbons, rags, even grass and moss. How could they keep wearing it when the nobles and the other
ahalad-kaaslane
hated her so?
She stopped at the edge of the Iisand’s road to wait for a midden wagon to pass. The teamster slouched on the box, his hands stained yellow by his cargo. Inside the wagon, Reisil heard a thick sloshing sound, and then the wind shifted and she caught the stench full in her face. She gagged and pressed her hand to her mouth. The teamster smiled a black-gapped smile and snickered.
“Never mind,” said a thick, scratchy voice beside her. “Happens that way sometimes. Remember to hold your breath is all. Makes a body grateful to have a head full of cotton.”
Reisil smiled at the snub-nosed, squinty-eyed man who crossed the road beside her. His nose was dripping. He swiped at it with his sleeve, shaking his head.
“Sure wish the Lady would invite spring to Her table,” he said. “Been passing this cold back and forth among the whole family. Third time I’ve had it. Can’t get any sleep for all the snoring. And my wife—” He shook his head and coughed, spitting a gob of greenish phlegm onto the rutted road. “She got a nursling. Poor itty-bitty is so stuffed up she can hardly suckle. Wife’s pulling out her hair.”
Reisil didn’t hesitate. “I’ve some things here that might help. If you’d like,” she said, showing him her pack.
He stopped, examining her shadowed features within her hood. “Can’t pay,” he said, his fleshy face flushing.
Reisil gave a faint, emphatic shake of her head. “There’s no need.”
Finally he nodded. “All right. Anything to get some sleep. Name’s Tillen,” he offered over his shoulder as they walked. “Right there.” He directed her between two sagging tents. Better than many, his home had two wooden sides. A patchwork blanket of wool was supported by the walls and a framework of gnarled branches, creating a space high enough to stand inside. Tillen waved at Reisil to follow after as he ducked through the low opening.
Inside was gloomy and thick with smoke. Three children huddled under blankets close to the low flames of the fire, arms and feet wrapped in strips of cloth. Their mother sat opposite on a square of wool, cradling a wailing baby. She raised red, swollen eyes at their entrance. Seeing Reisil, she hastily jerked up on the shoulder of her lowered tunic to cover her pale, milk-heavy breast.
A dog barked in the corner where he was tied. The younger of the two boys, eight years old, Reisil guessed, scurried from beneath the blanket and went to crouch beside the thin, flop-eared animal. The boy stroked the dog’s bristly black head to quiet him, watching Reisil, his nose and upper lip red and chapped.
Tillen went to his wife, grasping her shoulder with a gentle hand. “Suli, I brought some help.”
He glanced meaningfully at Reisil, who unslung her pack as she circled the fire and knelt beside the exhausted woman, noting her hair, dry as straw, her concave cheeks, thick breathing and dry, rasping cough.
“I’ll need some water—boiled,” Reisil said to Tillen.
“Kes and Mara aren’t back yet,” piped a hoarse young voice from the folds of the blanket. Then before her father could respond, the girl, all angles and bones, unfolded herself. She was about twelve, with a wide forehead and pointed chin and lank hair. Like her brother and father, her nose was running, her upper lip chapped red. “All we have left is for washing. I’ll see if Mer Wilka has any.”
She snatched up a pot from a makeshift sideboard and ducked out of the tent.
“May I?” Reisil asked, stretching her hands out to take the baby. Suli cast a fearful glance at her husband and then reluctantly passed the infant to Reisil.
Reisil bent and pressed her ear to the tiny boy’s chest, and then turned him over and did the same on his back. Though his breathing was stertorous, his lungs did not have the liquid, bubbling sound Reisil feared. As she examined him further, Reisil was pleased to discover that the patchwork swaddling was free of fleas and dirt.
The girl returned, setting a pot of water over the fire. Reisil set about ministering to the family, providing lozenges for sore throats, an unguent for congestion, a thick infusion of meadowsweet, wormseed, and willow bark to ease pain and congestion, and a chamomile ointment for the chapping. She worked quietly and without any attempt to use her magic. The ashes of the dead assassins swirled in her mind, and she feared what she might do.
At last she settled the woman on a pallet beside the fire, the baby nestled close and suckling at last. The other children snuggled against her at Reisil’s orders, warming each other and their mother beneath shared blankets.
“I’ll come back in a day or so,” Reisil told Tillen, stepping out of the tent more than an hour later. “But you need to find some good food. Bread, fish, something.” The look she gave him was apologetic. Certainly if he had food, or the means to get it, he would have. She did not want to be the one that suggested he butcher the dog, though its protected station inside their home meant he knew someone else
would
, if he were not careful.
“Fish are running far from shore these days, and a body has to go a far piece for crabs anymore. But I’ve got the dog. Good tracker.” Tillen shrugged. “Since Suli’s been sick, haven’t wanted to leave her alone—things get bad here sometimes. But she’ll be easier now. I’ll head out in the morning. See what game there is. Wapati are still foraging low, since it’s been cold. With the dog, I usually bring something back.”
Reisil nodded, understanding now how the man could keep his family in such comparative splendor. She inwardly winced at the irony. But it was true. They had clothes and blankets, wood and a substantial shelter. More than many.
“Anything I can do for you? Where you headed?”
“I’m looking for a young couple with a son. Liitsun is the husband’s name.”
Tillen nodded. “Know ’em. Came last fall from Poldmari in the Dume Griste spur. Lot of blight fallen on that family. You going to see the boy?”
Reisil nodded.
“I’ll show you the way. Least I can do.”
Reisil didn’t recognize the field of waist-high tents that proved to be their destination. The smell here was worse, wetter, with a clinging miasma of body waste and decay. She frowned at Tillen.
“This is not where Liitsun and Nisek had their tent.”
“Is now. There was a
wave,
couple of nights ago. Happens. Folks get restless, mob together, overrun their neighbors. Best of it is that Liitsun and Nisek managed to keep hold of a little bit—tent, some bits and pieces—and they didn’t get hurt. They’re wanting pretty bad for supplies. If I bring something back tomorrow, I’ll give them some of the meat. They found a patch there, up near the Gryphon Tower.” He pointed. “Gets some wind, but mostly in the lee of the wall. Low though, stays wet.
“Lots of folks from Poldmari here. Those who lived. And a lot of the other mountain villages. No place else to go. They’d rather die here than be bait for
nokulas
.”
Reisil scanned the long hollow and shivered. This was not a good place. It was a killing field, a dying field. She sucked in a quiet breath, hardening herself against what she couldn’t change.
“Ready, Reisiltark?”
Reisil jerked around, her hood falling back. “How did you know?”
Tillen flipped back his cloak to reveal his vest beneath. Green stitches zigzagged along the collar, brilliant and festive.
“Isn’t one of us down here that doesn’t know you and the Lady’s mark.” He pointed to the unfurling pattern of golden ivy.
Reisil looked away. Their trust only made her guilt worse. They, of anyone, should hate her the way the nobles and
ahalad-kaaslane
did.
Tillen squeezed her arm in his thick-fingered grip. “You’re the only healer what cares to come to the Fringes. Only
ahalad-kaaslane
I seen in a while either. None of us have to see your face to know you.”
Reisil felt her face convulse.
Table scraps. I ought to do more.
Tillen’s hand dropped away, expression sympathetic as he turned to gaze over the spread of tents, waiting while Reisil recovered her composure.
“Ready, then?” he asked gruffly after a few moments.
Reisil nodded, drawing up her hood and pulling her cloak tightly around herself, following after. The last hours had been more than she could comprehend. She felt a numbness creeping through her, and she welcomed it, welcomed the balm on her endlessly gnawing questions, her self-doubts and the loneliness that followed her like a shadow.
But the day was not over yet.
Chapter 7
F
our rough-hewn steps, a long sloping curve, a switchback, twenty narrow steps, another long curve, another switchback, more steps. Down and down into the stone roots of the castle.
The drumming of the harbor cavern echoed through the maze of passages, intensifying as Sodur and Lume descended, covering any sounds they made. The smell of brine and damp earth leached from the walls. The darkness was stygian. An iron cage of red coals dangled from Sodur’s left hand, a wicker basket from his right. The coals gave sufficient light for Lume to see, with no telltale glare to mark their coming. Sodur borrowed the lynx’s vision, though in truth, he hardly needed to. They’d trod this path at least once a day for over a year.
From the basket rose mouthwatering smells. Food fit for an Iisand. Sodur’s lips clamped together against the pain of a wound that would not heal. Not
an
Iisand.
The
Iisand, Geran Samir. Who was a secret prisoner in his own castle. Whom Sodur loved like a brother, even as he snapped the locks on the door, even as he kept careful watch against Geran’s escape.
The man and lynx came to a wide area where several corridors broke away like spokes on a broken wheel, some going up, others deeper into the stone. The pair turned into the leftmost passage. After several steps, it dropped in a sudden angle, the rock floor smooth and slippery with moss and damp. Sodur edged his way slowly along, pressing his back against the undressed wall. Once, many centuries before, this tunnel had been used as a waste chute, to dump the castle’s refuse into the ocean. Now it was unused. Briefly he considered dropping the contents of the basket down the shaft and into the salt waters below. But no. There must be nothing to invite the curious to investigate. And it
was
possible that Geran might eat something this time.